OpenAI publishes a community compact and a policy blueprint for compute campuses
OpenAI's post dated 5 November 2026 says it is publishing a National Community Compact and a Compute Campus Policy Blueprint. The compact is for future compute campuses that OpenAI owns and operates. The post says each of those campuses will have a local compact. The common commitments in the post are: pay the full cost of the electricity used and of the infrastructure needed to serve the site, and provide financial assurances before major spending so other customers are protected if a project is delayed, reduced or canceled; write a water plan, prioritise closed-loop or low-water cooling, and publish site-level water and electricity use; publish construction plans and independent noise studies before operations and annually afterward; and not use non-disclosure agreements with public officials, except for narrow protections covering legitimate security information, trade secrets, or proprietary or competitively sensitive information.
Source: OpenAI (opens in a new tab), 5 Nov 2026Also: OpenAI Compute Campus Policy Blueprint, November 2026 (opens in a new tab)
OpenAI's post dated 5 November 2026 says it is publishing a National Community Compact and a Compute Campus Policy Blueprint. The compact is for future compute campuses that OpenAI owns and operates. The post says each of those campuses will have a local compact. The common commitments in the post are: pay the full cost of the electricity used and of the infrastructure needed to serve the site, and provide financial assurances before major spending so other customers are protected if a project is delayed, reduced or canceled; write a water plan, prioritise closed-loop or low-water cooling, and publish site-level water and electricity use; publish construction plans and independent noise studies before operations and annually afterward; and not use non-disclosure agreements with public officials, except for narrow protections covering legitimate security information, trade secrets, or proprietary or competitively sensitive information.
The post uses two existing local examples. It says residents in Effingham County, Georgia, helped shape a $4.8 million grant for free school meals for all 14,000 students in the county. It says families in Pike County, Ohio, identified childcare, leading to a joint $6 million commitment from OpenAI and SB Energy. It also points to the existing Effingham agreement with Georgia Power, under which the utility may reduce power to the site by up to 1,000 megawatts when demand is high. That agreement was already described in OpenAI's 2 November Grid Protectors post.
The blueprint, the post says, asks federal, state and local policymakers to set rules for the industry. It says state utility commissions should require large electricity customers to cover the costs they add to the grid, and protect other customers if a project falls through. It says Congress can help by speeding up transmission upgrades and by restoring and expanding tax incentives for clean electricity. The blueprint PDF is also dated November 2026. Neither document is a statute.
What it means for business: the compact binds the description to campuses OpenAI owns and operates. It does not change a utility rule or a planning law by itself. The dollar figures and the 1,000 megawatt example are the post's account of existing local commitments. This describes the documents. It is not advice on a site or a power contract.